I’ve been fascinated by porn ever since I first found explicit naked magazines underneath my older brother’s bed when I was in the third grade. Maybe being gay is what kicked it all off for me. I knew something was different about me sexually, but I couldn’t put my finger on it.
Was I just curious to know everything there was about sex? Or maybe I’m just a hyper-sexual person and have been since the beginning of time?
Whatever the reason, porn has been a leading character in my sex life since I was a young kitten.
When I got into my teen years, I was pretty sexual with boys despite my lesbian-ness. I think I figured if I kept trying to feel sexual with boys, something would eventually stick (it never did).
This meant if I wanted to truly get off, I had to resort to my fantasy life. I did whatever I could to conjure up glittering images of two girls getting it on, but I didn’t have any life experience to draw from. I had to pull these scenes out of thin air.
This is where porn came in.
Watching porn gave me a baseline off of which my fantasies could build. I would watch it at 2 am, shady style, on our family computer, always making sure to clear the history afterward because even when I was 15 and acne-ridden, I was pretty sharp.
The trouble is, porn can be addictive.
Part of what’s hot for me in porn is the shock value. But the more you watch, the more your senses get dulled, and then you need more and more salacious porn to get you going.
Six months of your eyes taking in light bondage will start to seem as normal as tying your shoe laces. You will need something more intense to get your rocks off.
So, maybe a year and a half ago, I decided to lay off the porn.
The decision was derived from many things. I got sick and tired of it. I went on different antidepressants and lost my sex drive, so porn wasn’t so wildly exciting to me anymore.
But most of all, I became disturbed by it.
Ever since I watched the documentary “Hot Girls Wanted” about the underworld of the amateur porn world, I became totally turned off by porn. The documentary showed how taken advantage of and young these girls really are.
And I pride myself on being an advocate for young women, so how could I enjoy watching something in which really, really, really, really young girls are being practically date raped on camera?
I mean, at 18, are you really even old enough to know what you’re consenting to, and to have an understanding of the aftermath of what’s about to happen to you? No. You’re a fucking child at 18.
So in short, I stopped. And for a while I wasn’t having sex (singleness, antidepressants) at all.
But then I met someone I liked and I weaned off the antidepressants, and once again I was a sexual creature. Only, it was the first time in my adult life that I was a sexual creature without the influence of pornography.
And honestly, the sex I’ve had in the past year and a half has been the best sex of my life. I’m not influenced by the crazy stimuli of porn, and my imagination has reached new heights.
I’m also more connected, because sex is something I only equate to IRL, rather than the removedness I used to associate it with when I watched it from behind a computer screen. Sex is more emotional when you only connect it to a real human.
I’m more tapped into my senses. Fuck, I’m more present during sex than I’ve ever been.
Also, this might be TMI, but what the hell: My masturbation experience is better, too.
Look, watching two (or three or four) people go at it can be hot, but the imagination knows no bounds! You can escalate any fantasy by adding in a sexy location, making the characters dirty talk (because cheesy porn dirty talk is the worst) and you can see anyone you want to see in your minds. It’s a great exercise in creativity to really let your mind sexually wander.
Giving up porn has not only improved my moral code, but most importantly, it improved my sex life (masturbation is a key part of one’s sex life). And honestly, I don’t think I’ll ever go back.
I’m on the computer at least 10 hours a day, chatting with coworkers, writing articles and creating things for social media. I’m on the computer so much it’s given me severe social anxiety.
So I think I’ll keep my sex life sacred by keeping it totally and purely an intimate, real life experience. Because if my social life, work life and career are centered around the internet, I don’t need the most raw, animalistic part of me tarnished by the static screen of a computer. I’ll keep it between the sheets instead.
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